Years Go By And We're Gone
by Between The Clouds
Summary: Draco tries to teach his son that things change and people move on, but it's a lesson that neither of them have learned to accept yet.  Draco/Pansy, Scorpius/OC. Mostly epilogue compliant.


Years Go By and We're Gone

**Authors Note:** I actually like Pansy, okay? I can't help it. She should have ended up with Draco. I like to think that she's at least his mistress. Anyways, on to the story!

**Disclaimer:** If I was J.K. Rowling and owned Harry Potter, I would have put Draco and Pansy together. Luna and Neville too, for that matter.

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><p>The first time Elise Zabini burst through his front door, he felt dread bubbling up inside of him. The dread threatened to spill out and it was nearly impossible to keep it contained. Yet underneath the dread, he felt a tiny glimmer of hope. Hope that against all odds, things would be different this time. Hope that happily endings existed for the Slytherin families.<p>

She had milky chocolate skin like her father, but hers was several shades lighter. Her brown eyes were intense and calculating. Like her mother, she had a flat pug nose. (He thought pug noses were cute.) The girl liked wearing her sleek black hair in a chin-length bob like her mother used to many years ago. Sometimes she used potion to straighten it, but most of the time she just left it curly. Like a true Slytherin, she was cunning and sly and possessed just the slightest amount of arrogance. Oh, she could get nasty, but there was a strange sort of kindness about her. Looking at her parents, he wondered where she got it from.

The first time she entered his home she immediately built a bond with his son, Scorpius. She was three then and he was five. Even though they were two years apart, they were close friends. Their friendship was a sign for new beginnings throughout the entire wizarding world.

Her visits to the Malfoy manor were frequent as the years went by. When Elise was in her third year and Scorpius was in his fifth, romance had blossomed between them and she visited more than ever. At the time, he sort of felt that this was justification for his failed relationship with the girl's mother. Maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay for once.

He saw the girl's mother from time to time, but it wasn't the same. She wasn't the same, and neither was he. Sometimes, when he took in her raven hair against her porcelain skin, he wanted to hold her, breathe in her scent, and it would be just like all the times they did it when they were younger. But he knew if he did, they wouldn't fit right and they would know they were broken beyond repair. He would go back to his wife and she would go back to her husband and that's the way it had to be.

Even if they didn't fit right, he loved her. He loved her as much as he knew how to love anybody (except for maybe his son). He just didn't know it then. It didn't matter now anyways.

Scorpius Malfoy's liaison with Elise Zabini didn't last. For a few months, they were the happiest teenagers in all of Hogwarts. But as summer turned into fall, she visited the Malfoys less and less. On numerous occasions near the end of the summer, she was spotted with the Weasley boy. He never thought her parents would allow it. It was amazing how people could change. The day it was finally over for good, Scorpius came home looking surly and dejected.

He really should have expected it, he supposed, but love was such a hard lesson to learn and it was a technique that was never mastered.

Bonds are delicate things that change and break as time passes. The people who used to be his close friends were married and all of them were so busy (and so very, very _different_) they rarely said hello when they passed by each other on the streets. He saw them at a fancy gathering every Christmas, and sometimes not even then. First loves and best mates were replaced as you got older. He tried to tell his son this, but he wouldn't listen to any of it.

Years went by and Scorpius found many new loves. He was eventually engaged and married a former Ravenclaw girl. Elise grew up and became a Weasley, much to astonishment of many pureblood families. Hogwarts teachers were replaced and jumbled about. He grew older. People changed and left. He had known that eve since he was little, and he was perfectly fine with it.

Yet, some nights as he lay awake beside his wife, he wished her brown hair were black and her skin were just a little bit paler.

The End.


End file.
